


Red

by Trivialqueen



Category: Ghostbusters (Movies 1984-1989), Ghostbusters - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Seeing color when you see your soulmate, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 20:17:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14003898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trivialqueen/pseuds/Trivialqueen
Summary: Soulmate AU: Seeing color when you see your soulmate. Oneshot, Janine/Egon, Movie!verseHe is sitting on the floor of the New York Public library, investigating alleged paranormal activity when he sees them. Women’s shoes. Almond toed low heels. They aren’t grey though. They’re… a punch in the gut. A visceral reaction. They’re a color but he doesn’t know what. He just knows he feels it in his very soul. It’s hot and passionate and overwhelming. Are they red? This is what red surely must feel like.





	Red

 

Disclaimer: I do not own the Ghostbusters, else Ghostbusters II would have been *WAY* different.

 

* * *

 

His father was color blind. Truly color blind.

 

Most people lived a part of their life without colors but eventually met their soulmate and discovered every shade and hue of the rainbow around them. To his dying day Darwin Spengler never did. He was unable to. Some people were born without a soulmate. Their entire life was lived in black and whites and shades of grey.

 

His mother, however, could see in color. She had been able to since she set foot in the lab at Los Alamos in 1942. She had been hand selected out of university to work as one of the human computers in New Mexico, to work with Dr. Darwin Spengler. Katherine used to joke wistfully that her first color was the truly putrid shade of green of the floor in the laboratory. _Nothing striking, nothing romantic, just rancid pea soup. It made me wonder what was so wonderful about seeing color if that was what they looked like._ She had been heart broken when Darwin – her soulmate - had shown exactly no recognition of the monumental shift. He hadn’t seen colors. He would never see colors.

 

Despite the fact their soulmate connection was one-sided Darwin Spengler married Katherine Huxley the following year and they welcomed two sons, Egon in 1944 and Albin three years later. Katherine remained by her husband’s side, her soulmate’s side, until his death. She had tried to be happy. Sometimes she even was for a moment. But Spengler men are difficult to love.

 

Ever since he learned that his father couldn’t see colors – and that he would never see colors Egon was afraid he too was born without a soulmate. _You, young man, are just exactly like your father._ He’d cried all night when he was seven, after he had learned the truth about his father, the comparison ringing in his ears. He wanted to experience colors. To have a soulmate. To feel love.

 

(It wasn’t until years later did he learn that even those born without a soulmate could still feel love. One did not guarantee the other. It was only his father that didn’t understand love and that was why he didn’t have a soulmate, not the other way around.) Egon had gone home that night and shed tears for his mother. His dear mother who had lived twenty odd years with a man who was her soulmate and was incapable of loving her back.

 

For Forty years Egon lived in a colorless existence. He adapted to it. He thrived. Although, particularly in modern times, finding one’s soulmate and seeing color was the norm it was best practice to set the world up to accommodate those who had yet to make their soul connection. Egon, somewhere along the line, had even made peace (mostly) with the idea that he might not ever see color because he, like his father, might not have a soulmate. Most days it didn’t bother him. He didn’t think about the fact his world was defined by shades of grey. He instead focused on his work, on his research, on the task and science in front of him.

 

(Sometimes, however, it snuck up on him and he was struck by the fact he was forty and without a soulmate. That he, like his father, might not ever love. He very much wanted to love – and to be loved in return).

 

(Albin found his soulmate early – in high school. They had married after college. She was a lovely woman named Laura. They had two sons, Isaac and Johann. They were happy. He was unbearably sad. Speaking to his brother was to rekindle his fears that he, Egon, was exactly like their father.)

 

~ 

He is sitting on the floor of the New York Public library, investigating alleged paranormal activity when he sees them. Women’s shoes. Almond toed low heels. They aren’t grey though. They’re… a punch in the gut. A visceral reaction. They’re a color but he doesn’t know what. He just knows he feels it in his very soul. It’s hot and passionate and overwhelming. Are they red? This is what red surely must feel like.

 

The world is utter confusion – he’s never seen anything like it before, even though he’s been to the library thousands of times before. The world is also only a tunnel, everything but those shoes is blocked out. He doesn’t even hear his colleagues, Peter and Ray, call to him as he gets up and follows. He has to meet this woman. He has to find her – his soulmate.

 

He doesn’t find her.

 

She’s gone by the time he reaches the place he saw her, lost in the crowd that is New York City. His knees buckle under him, but he does not collapse. He feels like crying – his eyes itch, his throat tastes raw and bloody, but nothing comes out. Dejected he returns to his colleagues and brushes off their questions. Picking up the PKE meter he tries to block out the fact the world has fundamentally changed for him. And given everything that happens the rest of the day – the ghost, getting kicked out of the university it is (almost) easy to block out the confusing mess of color he doesn’t understand going on around him.

 

That night when he goes home he opens the encyclopedia to the page on colors and begins to learn then. He was right, that feeling was red. He contemplates but ultimately decides against calling his mother. She would surly sympathize with him, but he also knows it would break her heart to know that her son lost his soulmate as soon as he had found her. All he would ever know her by would be the color around him.

 

**~~~~~**

 

Even though she couldn’t see it Janine Melnitz loved color. She loved that it brought people joy and could by dynamic and dramatic. She loved what it represented – love, connection, soulmates. Her parents had found each other across a crowded room, the world falling away around them after their eyes met. _Heaven is blue, Janine, heaven will always be blue to me._ Her father was fond of saying. _Your mother wore a blue dress_. Blue had been Patrick’s first color. He’d fallen so in love with the color – and the woman that when they married he changed his name for her. Patrick Christian became Patrick Melnitz rather than Ruth going the other way ‘round. Ruth refused to live the irony of being a Jewish woman with the last name Christian. Her soulmate had agreed. Patrick had been the first husband the judge had ever heard of to legally change _his_ name after the wedding.

 

Ruth and Patrick loved each other to the best of their ability, with renewed purpose every day until Patrick passed away. It had been a privileged to grow up with such role models. One Janine took for granted until she was old enough to observe the relationships of her peers and how many of them, despite most being married to their soulmates, did not love one another as her parents had. Even her own sister and her soulmate did not fully live up to the standard of affection and support Ruth and Patrick set. Though at least Dolorous and Isaac came close.

 

Janine, for all of her love of color and her high standards for relationships, did not fear the fact she was approaching thirty and still seeing black and white. Ruth had been 32 when she met Patrick, he’d been even older. Take your time. Her mother advised. Do stuff with your life that’s for you, you’ve got plenty of time to find a soulmate, how much time do you have for fun?

Still, there were also times when Janine couldn’t help but wonder what her soulmate was like and where the hell were they? She hoped they were tall. With nice hands. She always had a thing for hands and forearms. She hoped that when they met he was wearing something colorful. When she and Lori were little girls their mother had taken them out to the park one summer’s day. Green, she’d said, was the smell of freshly mowed grass. The warmth of sunshine was yellow. Heaven was blue. Ruth’s first color had been aubergine. Purple was the color of royalty. 

 

~ 

“Janine, I’d like to introduce you to my colleagues. This is Dr. Ray Stantz and Dr. Egon Spengler.” Peter Venkman said. Janine’s carefully honed Asshole-dar went through the roof when she met the Psychologist, but she was willing to ignore that aspect of her instincts when he hired her on the spot. After quitting her job without a backup for the first time in her life Janine was willing to ignore a lot in order to have the security of a job again. Dr. Stantz was a young looking, jovial man with a wide smile. But he was almost immediately forgotten when Janine met Dr. Spangler.

 

Wham.

Bam.

Alakazam.

 

She had only heard Natalie Cole sing about the color orange, but Janine was certain that this was what it felt like.

 

Except Dr. Spengler didn’t react. Janine was certain the fact that she was seeing color upon meeting him was written all over her face. This man, this tall, handsome, quiet man was her soulmate. Except his face was just as passive as it was a minute ago. Nothing, other than a handshake that lasted an awkward second too long because she couldn’t stop staring.

She wants to scream. Her parents were drawn together across a crowded room. She had waited her whole life to see colors, to find her soulmate. And now she had – except her soulmate wasn’t her soulmate.

 

**~~~~~**

 

Despite believing in ghosts Egon Spengler believed in neither luck nor fate. However, when the woman in red shoes walked into the Ghostbusters office weeks after he had first seen color he almost believed. He would have recognized her anywhere, his soulmate, every detail seared into his mind. Particularly his first association of red. She was not wearing the shoes. Those damn powerful shoes. But her hair, in the right light, gleamed with that passionate, warm color and he was left breathless. Shaking her hand was a stunning experience. He could see in her eyes the moment she recognized the change in the world around them – the colors. He had felt like weeping. He might have actually cried if Peter and Ray weren’t _right there_ watching the entire interaction. What was he supposed to say in front of his friends and colleagues? I’m so glad they hired you – you’re my soulmate?

 

He cursed his natural reserve, however, as he watched his soulmate leave the interview, visibly dejected. He wanted to run after her and tell her – I can see color too. It’s you. It’s you whom I’ve been looking for my whole life.

 

But he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

 

A week passed. And then another.

 

Would calling her be creepy? Would mentioning it out of the blue be awkward?

How did you tell someone they were your soulmate?

 

And then she wore the shoes. He stopped dead in the middle of the garage bay and stared. The heels were still as vibrant and visceral as they were when he first saw them, over a month ago.

 

“Red.”

 

Janine looked up from pouring herself a cup of coffee, confusing etched across her delicate features.

 

“Come again?”

 

“Your shoes.” They both looked down at her feet.

 

“You can see color.” Here feet were now shifting under his gaze. He was uncertain if it was discomfort or something else making them dance.

“I couldn’t until last month.” He willed her to meet his gaze, which she did eventually. Her eyes were wide and round, he could see his reflection tinted hazel green in them. He plunged ahead. He’d never have another chance like this again to say what was on his mind – and in his heart. He was tired of waiting. He wanted his soulmate.

 

“You wore those shoes to the Public library. I saw them – I saw you there.” He took a step forward, and then another. For her part Janine seemed frozen in place. “They taught me what red was.”

 

“What is red?” Janine asked, setting her coffee down and raising her hands to tentatively rest against his chest. He took her hands in his and brought them to his lips, kissing each red tipped finger.

 

“It’s you.”


End file.
